The Exit Poll Mirage

While exit polls sketch a dramatic map of India’s electoral mood, the line between projection and verdict remains perilously thin. With the ballots across five politically pivotal arenas of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry falling silent until the results are announced on May 4, poll surveyors have filled the vacuum with exit poll numbers that excite, alarm and often mislead. These projections have already begun shaping narratives well before D-Day on May 4. If India’s...

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While exit polls sketch a dramatic map of India’s electoral mood, the line between projection and verdict remains perilously thin. With the ballots across five politically pivotal arenas of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry falling silent until the results are announced on May 4, poll surveyors have filled the vacuum with exit poll numbers that excite, alarm and often mislead. These projections have already begun shaping narratives well before D-Day on May 4. If India’s electoral history offers any lesson, it is that exit polls illuminate trends, not truths. Bengal’s Brinkmanship Nowhere is the drama more intense than in West Bengal, arguably the most keenly watched contest among all five arenas. The contest for its 294 seats has long transcended the state’s borders, becoming a proxy for national ambition. Most exit polls now point to a striking possibility of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) majority, in some cases a commanding one. Such an outcome would mark a political earthquake. For decades, Bengal has resisted the BJP’s advances, its politics shaped instead by regional forces - first the Left Front, then Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC). Yet the arithmetic of the polls suggests that the BJP’s campaign built on organisational muscle and the promise of ‘parivartan’ (change) may have finally breached that wall. The TMC, meanwhile, appears to be grappling with anti-incumbency and persistent allegations of corruption. Still, one outlier poll suggests it could yet retain power, a reminder that Bengal’s electorate has a habit of confounding linear predictions. Here, more than anywhere else, the gap between projection and reality may prove widest. Steady Script If Bengal is volatile, the Assam outcome looks fairly settled. Across agencies, there is near unanimity that the BJP-led alliance is poised not just to retain power, but to do so comfortably. With the majority mark at 64 in the 126-member assembly, most estimates place the ruling coalition well above that threshold, in some cases approaching triple digits. The opposition Congress alliance, by contrast, appears stranded far behind. Under Himanta Biswa Sarma, the BJP has fused development rhetoric with a keen sense of identity politics, crafting a coalition that has proved resilient. A third consecutive term would underline the party’s deepening institutional hold over the state. Kerala, by contrast, may be returning to its old rhythm. For decades, the state has alternated power between the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) with metronomic regularity. The LDF broke that pattern in the last election, securing an unprecedented second term. Exit polls now suggest that experiment may be short-lived. Most projections place the UDF comfortably above the 71-seat majority mark in the 140-member assembly, with the LDF trailing significantly. If borne out, this would reaffirm Kerala’s instinctive resistance to prolonged incumbency. Governance records matter here, but so does a deeply ingrained political culture that treats alternation as a form of accountability. Familiar Duel? Tamil Nadu, long dominated by its Dravidian titans, shows little appetite for disruption as per most exit polls, which place M.K. Stalin’s DMK-led alliance above the halfway mark of 118 in the 234-seat assembly. Yet, some sections have suggested a possible upset could be staged by actor Vijay’s TVK, the wildcard in the Tamil Nadu battle. Most polls, however, are clear that the opposition AIADMK alliance, though competitive, seems unlikely to unseat the incumbent DMK. In Puducherry, the smallest of the five contests, the implications may nonetheless be outsized. Exit polls give the BJP-led alliance a clear majority in the 30-seat assembly, relegating the Congress-led bloc to a distant second. Numerically modest, the result would carry symbolic weight. A victory here would further entrench the BJP’s presence in the south, a region where it has historically struggled to gain ground. For all their allure, exit polls are imperfect instruments. They rest on limited samples, extrapolated across vast and diverse electorates. In a country where millions vote, the opinions of a few thousand can only approximate reality and often fail to capture its nuances. There is also the problem of the ‘silent voter’ - individuals who either conceal their preferences or shift them late. Recent elections have offered ample reminders. In states such as Haryana and Jharkhand, and even in Maharashtra where margins were misjudged, exit polls have erred, and sometimes dramatically sp. Moreover, the modern exit poll is as much a media event as a methodological exercise. Packaged with graphics, debates and breathless commentary, it fills the void between voting and counting with a sense of immediacy that may be more theatrical than analytical. That said, to dismiss them entirely would be too easy. Exit polls do serve a purpose in sketching broad contours, highlighting regional variations and offering clues about voter sentiment. For political parties, they are early signals and act as tentative guides for observers. Taken together, this cycle’s exit polls suggest a broad, if tentative, pattern of the BJP consolidating in the east and north-east, and opposition alliances regaining ground in parts of the south, and continuity prevailing in key states. But patterns are not outcomes and only counted votes confer legitimacy. It is only on May 4 when the sealed electronic voting machines will deliver that clarity. They will determine whether Bengal witnesses a political rupture or a resilient incumbent, whether Assam’s stability holds, whether Kerala’s pendulum swings back, and whether Tamil Nadu stays its course. (The writer is a senior journalist and political analyst. Views personel.)

Unequal Law

Correspondent
Dec 8, 2025
2 min read

Few legal asymmetries in India expose the uneasy bargain between secularism, vote-bank politics, and gender justice as starkly as the continuing permissibility of polygamy for Muslim men. While Hindu, Christian, Sikh and Parsi men have been bound by monogamy for decades, Sunni Muslim personal law still allows up to four wives.

For decades, India’s political class has treated Muslim polygamy as an awkward inheritance best left untouched. That uneasy settlement is now under strain following the recent landmark survey by the Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), based on 2,508 Sunni women across seven states.

The survey has dragged the hidden costs of polygamy out of private misery and into the national ledger. Its findings are profoundly political. The BMMA documents sharp health deterioration among first wives: chronic sleep disorders, hypertension, migraines, thyroid dysfunction, menstrual problems and diabetes - all at rates significantly higher than among second wives. Mental health outcomes are grimmer still. Insomnia, anxiety, depression, helplessness and social withdrawal stalk the first wife with disturbing regularity.

Since Independence, successive governments have treated Muslim personal law as a domain too electorally sensitive to reform. The bitter memory of the Shah Bano case in 1985 when Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress-led government overturned a Supreme Court judgment granting maintenance rights to a divorced Muslim woman under pressure from conservative clerics has cast a long shadow. It taught politicians that touching Muslim personal law carried the price of organised backlash, and possibly electoral loss.

Apologists insist polygamy is rare, or that it is divinely regulated when in fact it embeds a hierarchy in law between men and women, and among women themselves. It legalises emotional, economic and sexual asymmetry under the authority of the state. It weakens women’s bargaining power inside marriage and normalises abandonment under the disguise of legality.

The Supreme Court has described polygamy as an “injurious practice” even while acknowledging its legal status under Muslim personal law. Several Muslim-majority countries - from Tunisia to Turkey - have banned it altogether. India, for all its constitutional claims, remains on the more regressive side of this divide.

Why the hesitation? The answer lies in the peculiar coalition that has guarded this privilege. Conservative religious bodies defend polygamy as theological necessity. So-called ‘secular intellectuals,’ wary of being seen as ‘majoritarian,’ treat criticism of regressive Muslim practices as cultural trespass.

This is not secularism but a clear abdication of women’s rights which these secularists and feminists claim to champion in so shrill a manner. The irony that these upholders of secularist values fail to see is that Muslim women themselves have been among the most persistent voices for change. They ask for the same marital certainty that other Indian women take for granted.

Banning polygamy may not instantaneously transform social behaviour. But it will declare, unambiguously, that the Indian state recognises only one equal partnership at a time. That is not a cultural imposition. It is the minimum architecture of modern gender justice.

The Exit Poll Mirage

Unequal Law

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